brief biography

Jean "Baptiste" Dorion, the son of Pierre Dorion and Marie L’Aguivoise (Aioe), was born 1813 and died about 1850, probably in the Willamette Valley, Oregon.

His father was an Astorian and came out West with his wife and family and working for Manuel Lisa on the Missouri River in Montana. Old Pierre brought his family into the Old Oregon country in 1813 with Wilson P. Hunt of the Pacific Fur Company. He was killed in 1814 while on an expedition with John Reed on the Boise River in Idaho.

Jean Baptiste is usually called Baptiste and worked out of Fort Nez Perces (Walla Walla) where he was discharged in 1837, but he was re-employed in 1840. He married a Cayuse woman named Josephte (Josephine) Walla Walla on February 3, 1845.

In 1835 he was a guide for John K. Townsend, and in 1842 acted as interpreter to Dr. Elijah White when he visited the Cayuse and Nez Perce Indians. He was on Tom McKay’s Trapping Party in 1834-1835 and on the Snake Country Brigades in 1835-1836. In 1842 and 1843 he was an interpreter.

S. J., who wrote that his parents were Pierre Dorion and Marie Aioe, which, like Aguivoise, was another of the one hundred and six methods of spelling the apparently simple name Iowa. Baptiste's eldest son was named Pierre Dorion, who was born in 1836, baptized July 25, 1841, and died in 1854. Three other children also died, Genevieve, Phileminie and Joseph, but David lived until recent years but can not now be located although he is well remembered.

In 1848 during the cayuse war, Baptiste was commissioned as second lieutenant of the Oregon Rifles, under Captain Thomas McKay, (Astorian), and took part in the battle of Well Springs. He was murdered by a white man in 1848.